The Burning Soul

‘And how did your client respond to this magnanimous gesture on your part?’

‘The client is thinking about it.’

Walsh threw up his hands.

‘Well, that’s just great. That’s set my mind right at rest. Your client is going to think about a duty to share information that may be pertinent to an ongoing investigation. Meanwhile, there’s a fourteen-year-old girl missing and, in my experience, the people who abduct fourteen-year-old girls don’t tend to have their best interests at heart. And you, you spineless son of a bitch, are shifting your moral responsibilities on to a lawyer. You’re right down at the bottom of the swamp now, Parker, mired with the weeds and the parasites. You, of all people, should know better. Have you seen the news? Have you watched Valerie Kore crying for her child? You know what she’s going through, and there’ll be worse to come if we don’t find her daughter in time. You want that on your head, a man who lost his own child, who understands-’

It was the mention of Jennifer that did it – that, and the fact that I knew Walsh was right. Immediately I was on my feet, and Walsh was on his. I heard myself shouting at him, losing control, and I wasn’t even aware of the words that I was saying. Walsh was shouting back at me, spittle flying from his mouth, his finger jabbing at my face. The door behind us opened, and Allan entered along with another older patrolman I hadn’t seen before, and in the background were faces staring at us: Mrs. Shaye; the mechanic; Walsh’s partner, Soames; two state troopers; and a pair of men in suits.

Even in my anger and self-pity, in the self-righteousness that I was using to mask my shame, I recognized one of them, and I knew that the game had taken another turn. I stepped back from Walsh, and from my own worst instincts.

‘I want a phone call,’ I said. ‘I want to call my lawyer.’

The door was locked again, and once more I was alone. I wasn’t under arrest, and I hadn’t been charged with any crime. Neither had a telephone yet materialized. It was possible that they could hold me for obstructing the course of justice, but Aimee would swat that one out of the sky with a flick of her wrist. The problem, as I simmered in the chair, was that I felt the truth of Walsh’s statement. I knew better than to behave the way that I was behaving. I knew because I carried the memory of a dead child with me wherever I went. The weight of her loss was heavy on my heart, and I would not and could not wish that pain on another person. Legally, I was within my rights to withhold what I knew about Randall Haight; morally, I was beneath contempt, for Haight’s right to privacy was subordinate to a child’s right to life.

Yet while I felt that Haight was engaged in an act of misrepresentation, a manipulation of the truth for his own ends, I still did not believe he was involved in whatever had befallen Anna Kore. At the same time, despite my assurances to Walsh, I could not be certain that his troubles and the girl’s disappearance were not connected simply because I had not yet found any evidence to link them. But if they were linked, then I could not believe that the person who was sending photographs and discs to Haight would be careless enough to leave evidence on the contents of the envelopes, or even on the envelopes themselves. Still, that was not my call to make. I didn’t have a forensics lab in my basement, and who knew what trace evidence or DNA evidence might be found if the envelopes and their contents were submitted for examination?

But I was also troubled by the man I had seen staring back at me from the doorway of Chief Allan’s office. We had never met, but I knew his face: I had watched him hovering around the outskirts of a RICO trial in Augusta earlier in the year, and while I was being interviewed in the aftermath of a smuggling operation that had made the newspapers during the summer. His name was Robert Engel, and he had the nebulous title of Deputy Supervisor of Operations in the Organized-Crime Squad of the FBI’s Boston Division. In effect, he had a roving brief, and acted as a conduit for information and resources between the New England divisions and the three units of the Organized- Crime Section at FBI headquarters in Washington – La Cosa Nostra and racketeering; Eurasian/ Middle Eastern crime; and Asian and African criminal enterprises – as well as working with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to uncover potential sources of terrorist funding through the medium of organized criminal activity. Engel was an accomplished diplomat, carefully navigating his way through the FBI’s own cutthroat world of internecine warfare as well as its ongoing feuds with sister agencies – in particular the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. In addition, he had worked to rebuild the Bureau’s reputation in Boston following revelations of collusion between some of its agents and leading organized-crime figures in the city.

There was no apparent reason for Engel to be in a boon-docks police department during the investigation into the disappearance of a young girl. Nevertheless he was here, and his presence explained some of the odd features of the case, including the length of time it had taken for Anna Kore’s mother to make a public appeal. It suggested a conflict of views, and Engel’s presence meant that there were at least two arms of the FBI involved in the Kore investigation. Plus, if Engel was involved, then the feds either knew about organized criminal activity in Pastor’s Bay or were watching for someone at the periphery, someone with connections that extended beyond the town’s limits.

I needed to talk to Aimee, for both our sakes. It was now more important than ever that we convinced Randall Haight of the necessity of coming forward and revealing the nature of the messages that were being sent to him and the reason for them, even at the risk of disrupting his carefully safeguarded existence. It was one thing to rile the Maine State Police, and I had sound reasons for wanting to do that as little as possible. My PI’s license had been rescinded in the past for angering the MSP, and any future action taken against me might well result in its permanent forfeiture. Screwing around with the FBI was another matter entirely. The cops would have to charge me or let me go, but the feds could put me behind bars for as long as they wanted. Aimee would probably be okay, as even the FBI tended to dislike jailing lawyers without good cause. I, on the other hand, was only a PI, and while I was aware that there were those in the Bureau who were interested in me and, for reasons of their own, were prepared to give me a degree of protection, they did so out of a sense of duty rather than any great personal fondness, and they might well view a spell in a lockup, either county or one more shadowy, as a useful way of reminding me of the limits of their tolerance.

Eventually, after almost another hour had gone by, the door was unlocked. This time it was Allan who entered, and the door stayed open. Behind him, the building was relatively quiet. Engel and his acolytes, Walsh and the staties, all were elsewhere. Apart from Engel I could see only the older cop with his cap under his arm, and a pretty young woman wearing sweatpants and an old Blackbears T-shirt who seemed to have taken over from Mrs. Shaye for a time but was now putting on her coat in preparation for departure.

‘You’re free to go,’ said Allan. He didn’t look pleased about it.

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it. It’s not my call. I had my way, you’d have told us everything you know by now.’

‘You won’t believe this, but I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d taken the hard road.’

‘Save it. We’ll find out who you were speaking with, one way or another. We’ve already started asking about your car. This is a small community, and it’s on its guard. Someone will have seen you parked, and we’ll take it from there. You be sure to let your “client” know that. You can collect your gun and your phone from Becky.’

I handed my playing card over to Becky. She wasn’t as friendly as Mrs. Shaye, and she didn’t look as if she ate many cookies, but I thanked her anyway. When I got to my car, I turned on my cell phone and called Aimee. She answered on the first ring.

‘Thanks for rushing to my aid,’ I said.

‘I thought you might feel I was threatening your masculinity. Have they let you go?’

‘Reluctantly. I don’t want to do this over the phone, and I’m too tired to talk face-to-face now. Can you make time for me in the morning?’

‘First thing. I’ll be there at eight. In the meantime, I’ve spoken to our client.’

‘And?’

‘I think he may be starting to see the light after your earlier conversation with him, but he’s still reluctant to come forward.’

‘Twist his arm,’ I told her. ‘He comes forward soon, or I’m giving him up.’

I killed the connection. I was tired, and I almost considered trying to find a bed for the night in Pastor’s Bay, but a quick look along the deserted main street convinced me otherwise. Eventually I might have to stay nearer to the town, but I had no desire to stay in it. It might have been my weariness after hours spent in that small room, and the pall that the disappearance of Anna Kore had cast over the place, but I felt that, even without the trauma of her vanishing, I would still have been anxious to leave Pastor’s Bay behind. Seeing it now, empty of souls, I felt the wrongness of it: There was not meant to be a town here, or not this town. The very